- Prof. Brian Cox presents “Feeding the Future,” and it’s not entirely about GMOs. Worth sitting through the whole thing.
- Did we say that Cary Fowler recently received the Frank N. Meyer Medal for Plant Genetic Resources? This is what he had to say on a different recent occasion.
- Want to adopt a coffee seed? Kew will let you give a really cool Christmas gift.
- Or you could buy some Ethiopian coffee.
- Speaking of Christmas gifts…
- CIAT’s bean diversity collection gets its 15 minutes of fame. And ICARDA’s chickpea collection is not far behind.
- More on “open source seeds.”
- Mobilizing the green gold of plant genetic resources: maybe if they were open source…
- Not just green, though, right? Veggies come in all sorts of colours.
- Brexit may do for Wensleydale. I knew there must be a silver lining.
Brussels beer
Count me in.
Biodiversity from Cancun to London
The 13th Conference of the Parties (COP) to the Convention on Biological Diversity in going on right now in Cancun, Mexico, and the theme is mainstreaming biodiversity for well-being. The CGIAR centres are there both collectively and individually, mainstreaming away like mad, for example, on the agricultural side. But as I browsed through the draft decisions, what I was struck by was the repeated mention of biodiversity in cities:
6. [The COP] [a]lso encourages Parties, other Governments, relevant organizations and funding agencies to promote and support further research on health-biodiversity linkages and related socioeconomic considerations, including, inter alia, on the following issues:
…
(e) The contribution of biodiversity and the natural environment, including protected areas, in promoting mental health, particularly in urban areas
I’m not sure if urban biodiversity is a relatively new focus for the CBD, but it must offer lots of opportunities for mainstreaming. Cities are, after all, where most people live, so if you were going to make biodiversity part of as many people’s lives as possible, cities would be a good place to start. I bet crop wild relatives are not often seen as one such opportunity, and yet a website I’ve recently come across would suggest otherwise.
The London Tree Map shows the location of 700,000 street trees all over that particular metropolis. That includes a number of wild relatives of cultivated fruits, such as apples and pears.
I don’t know about you, but a street lined with different wild apple species would do wonders for my mental health.
Anyway, there’s more coming out of Cancun every day, including a Declaration, and there’s a whole Twitter account for you to follow if you want to keep up to date.
Nibbles: Diversification, Street food, Forest genetic units, Citrus greening, COP22 roundup, Australian breeding, Temperate Orchard Society, Quinoa conference
- Diversifying crop production for the SDGs: the view from AVRDC.
- Local bread, in India and Istanbul.
- Foresters get all genetic.
- Winning the battle against citrus greening in Florida.
- Yeah, so what happened in Marrakech?
- Do chickpeas really have the nutritional value of cardboard?
- An apple genebank a day…
- Drawing the International Year of Quinoa to a decorous close.
Brainfood: Pre-breeding, Wheat in Ethiopia, CAP & minor crops, IITA germplasm management, Cassava improvement, B73 maize inbred, Livestock uses, Range expansion, Sustainability standards, Soybean origins, Popping sorghum
- Evolving gene banks: improving diverse populations of crop and exotic germplasm with optimal contribution selection. Crop genebanks should learn from livestock breeding.
- Ethiopian wheat yield and yield gap estimation: A spatially explicit small area integrated data approach. You can explain 40% of the variation in wheat yield without leaving your office.
- Land Use, Yield and Quality Changes of Minor Field Crops: Is There Superseded Potential to Be Reinvented in Northern Europe? The CAP has been really bad for minor crops in Finland.
- Navigating international exchange of plant genetic resources amidst biosecurity challenges: experiences of IITA in Africa. Genebanks need to work closely with people who know about phytosanitary rules.
- Rooting for cassava: insights into photosynthesis and associated physiology as a route to improve yield potential. Canopy structure and architecture could do with improvement. No doubt IITA are working on that.
- Genetic variability within accessions of the B73 maize inbred line. Is greater than it should be.
- Using Rare Breeds in Animal-Assisted Activities: A New Model Proposed at the “Animal Farm” in Ladispoli (Rome, Italy). Worthy effort, terrible name.
- Adaptive and non-adaptive evolution of trait means and genetic trait correlations for herbivory resistance and performance in an invasive plant. When plants are released from pressure from natural enemies, they gradually lose resistance to herbivory and perform better, but independently.
- How Can High-Biodiversity Coffee Make It to the Mainstream Market? The Performativity of Voluntary Sustainability Standards (VSS) and Outcomes for Coffee Diversification. Apparently, it can’t, not without changing its flavour.
- Genetic diversity center of cultivated soybean (Glycine max) in China – New insight and evidence for the diversity center of Chinese cultivated soybean. Here. But not only.
- Heritability of Popping Characteristics in Sorghum Grain. You can breed for popping quality, but environment also has an effect.